Home*School*Home: Spelling woes.

I am having some difficulty trying to figure out a painless way to teach my homeschooling 16 year old how to spell. He's so smart and he loves to just read and absorb information that with any other subject, I can just hand him a book and off he goes. Spelling is different. Spelling is one of his glitches. (The other one is handwriting). I think he would do well with learning the etymology (word origins) of the words to see why it is spelled the way it is. I thought that The Logic of English would be a good fit for him, but he finds it mind-numbingly dry, at least the way the lessons are presented on Youtube. We may just have to just accept that it is going to be kind of painful or kind of mind-numbing and go with it, but meanwhile, I am looking at etymology as a key to spelling because he's fascinated with word origins. I found a couple of really cool videos here but only a couple, not one for each of the word families. I am open to suggestions!

Anyone!?

Has anyone tried English from the Roots Up?

Homeschooling Advice.

1. Try it. You might enjoy it. It might change your life. It might not be your thing, but you won't know if you don't ever try.

2. Find out what your state (or country) requires, the bare minimum. Do this and then with the rest of it, have fun with it. It doesn't have to be all serious and it doesn't have to look like the inside of a classroom. You're at home. Relax. Play. Read. Learn together. Enjoy your kids. They grow up way too fast.

3. Don't let a written curriculum boss you around. If it works, great. If it's not working for you, throw it out. If only parts of it work, use those and throw the rest out. It's not the boss of you. When shopping for curriculum, read reviews. Try to go somewhere where you can actually hold the book in your hands and look through it. Print out a sample day or week and try and implement it or borrow it before buying. It's kind of hit and miss buying books without being able to see them.

4. Find a homeschool support group. Or two. If you can't find one in real life, find one online. Get support where ever you can.

5. Make a mess now and then. Go outside and put some mentos in coke. Make alka-seltzer rockets. Make some great art. Make a timeline and a map. Grow some borax crystals. Use levers to lift things. Make a trebuchet out of whatever you can find around the house.

6. Go on as many field trips as you can.

The point of this blog.

"there is a theme, if you read, you'll get a growing conviction that homeschooling is a lifestyle that is worthwhile, that it is extremely good for kids and families, that it promotes bonding, is a personalized education that is superior to what you can get anywhere else for your kids, is fun and can be done even if you have a 400 track mind, no math skills (thankfully my husband does though), through working, job changes, bad hair days, home remodeling, deaths, illness, surgery, broken bones and various other things and it actually makes dealing with these things easier, not harder, than it was when we were in the public schools, because homeschooling is so incredibly flexible. That's the point I've been trying to make for the last 5 years or so."

4 comments:

:)De said...: We have the same struggles with spelling. I use a phonics base to teach it, but that video was interesting to me. My oldest would probably be scratching his head if I showed him that. LOL.

Hope you find something that works.

BTW, I am in KY now :); 2:50 PM
Fatcat said...: Hey, what town are you in? Maybe we could meet?; 5:45 PM
:)De said...: Dry Ridge.; 9:26 PM
Fatcat said...: Any chance you will be in Louisville ?; 8:53 AM

Thursday, December 04, 2014

Spelling woes.

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